Death and Reality in Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates :: Where Are You Going Where Have You Been

Death and Reality in Where Are You Going, Where feel You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates Joyce Carol Oates Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? is about a young girls struggle to escape reality while defying authority and portraying herself as a beauty queen ultimately, she is forced spur to reality when confronted by a man who symbolizes her demise. The young girl, Connie, is hell- bent on not becoming like her mother or sister. She feels she is above them because she is prettier. She wants to live in a dream world where she listens to music all day and lives with Prince Charming. She does not encounter Prince Charming but is visited by someone, Arnold Friend, who embodies the soul of something evil. Arnold Friend symbolizes Death in that he is going to take Connie away from the world she once knew. Even if she is not dead, she will never be the same person again, and will be dead in spirit. With the incorporation of irony, Oates illustrates how Connies self-infatua tion, her sole reason for living, is the reason she is faced with such a terrible situation possibly ending her purport. Connie is only refer about her physical appearance. She can be described as being narcissistic because she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirror or checking other peoples faces to make sure her own was all right (Oates 148). Connie wants her life to be different from everyone elses in her family. She thinks because she is prettier, she is entitled to much more. She wants to live the perfect life in which she finds the right boy, marries him, and lives happily ever after. This expectation is nothing less than impossible because she has not experienced love or anything like it. She has only been subjected to a fantasy world where everything is seemingly perfect. This is illustrated in the story when Connie is thinking about her previous encounters with boys Connie sat with her eyes closed in the sun, dreaming a nd dazed with the hotness about her as if this were a kind of love, the caresses of love, and her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice he had been, how gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs (151).